Boston Celtic fans might have to put those retirement party balloons for Rasheed Wallace on hold.

The newest Celtic, Shaquille O'Neal, said Wallace may in fact return to the C's this season.

Wallace told the Celtics during the NBA Finals in June that despite having two years and nearly $13 million left on his contract, he was planning to retire.

The Celtics have spent the summer looking for potential trades involving Wallace, which would allow them to bolster their roster in his absence and allow Wallace to walk away with whatever buyout amount he could work out with the team that acquired him via trade.

However, the C's never came across a deal that they liked.

But those plans to move Sheed may be scrapped altogether.

"I know Rasheed is thinking about coming back," said O'Neal, who was in attendance at a charity basketball game in Orlando, Fla. "Rasheed, go on and come back for one or two more years."

Personally I believe this is just Shaq being Shaq and making up a story, but if Rasheed were to come back, managing minutes would definitely cause many headaches for Coach Rivers. My guess is the Celtics never would have signed Shaq if they thought Rasheed would return.

12 Responses so far.

A couple of things... Sheed coming back would've been a selling point for the Celtics to bring Sheed in if anything, just another guy to help win a ring. Also, Rivers managed minutes better tahn anyone in the league last year so I don't believe that's an issue either. This is coming from a lifelong C's fan and someone who watched every minute of every game possible last season.

That would actually be TOO many big guys and really redundant with the Jermaine O'Neal signing. It's not possible to give playing time to KG, O'Neal, O'Neal, Davis and Rasheed. They'd probably all deserve time too, whereas Shelden, really didn't. And then when Perkins returns it'd be more ridiculous.

Having sheed back would be a definite plus. They could all avg 20 min a night during the regular season or they could rotate taking games off just to keep everyone fresh. Can never have enough depth, at least one of them is going to miss significant time during the season with all the knee and back problems between them.

I personally don't have an issue with Sheed returning. Think about it. More depth means less minutes for all our aging big men. And who says Sheed really has to play that much during the regular season anyway? If any one of the frontline doesn't care about playing time, it's Sheed. Think about how much he really came up big for the Celtics in the playoffs, especially against Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol. He managed to frustrate the crap out of those two. With most of the frontline pretty much either old or injury prone, it couldn't hurt to have a little more depth.

Besides... imagine how crazy of a team we could have on our hands here. Shaq + Sheed + KG in addition to our own Shrek & Donkey? It'd be one hell of a season.

I highly doubt Sheed will really come back... but if he does, I'm going to welcome him with open arms.